The peopel from the foggy iland can handel fog better than the lufthansa guys :-)
Extreme generalisation here, and I am not trying to suggest BA aren’t safe, but Lufthansa cancelled all of the flights in the end so I came back home this evening. However some (not all) of the BA flights between Heathrow and Frankfurt were operating. Although I haven’t experienced it yet, its not unknown at least at London City to experience two go-arounds due to fog and then having to be diverted somewhere else. I guess Lufthansa think they’d rather be stuck in their homeland, than Luton or Stansted, – somewhere where its going to lose them money flying an empty plane somewhere.
Though some muppet taking out the STN ILS didn’t exactly help!
What happened there. I heard about that.
A G550 busted the array at one end taking one ILS out of service and reducing the other to CAT I until well into the afternoon on a foggy day. You may imagine the chaos given everyone uses Luton as first alternate hence our ending up in Gatwick.
hence our ending up in Gatwick.
What plane are you flying, Josh?
Extreme generalisation here, and I am not trying to suggest BA aren’t safe, but Lufthansa cancelled all of the flights in the end so I came back home this evening. However some (not all) of the BA flights between Heathrow and Frankfurt were operating. Although I haven’t experienced it yet, its not unknown at least at London City to experience two go-arounds due to fog and then having to be diverted somewhere else. I guess Lufthansa think they’d rather be stuck in their homeland, than Luton or Stansted, – somewhere where its going to lose them money flying an empty plane somewhere.
I wonder if there are two factors in play here:
It is a huge hassle for an airline to dump passengers in some place inconvenient to the airline, and they will do anything to avoid that. Look at that BA 747 which flew right across the USA and the Atlantic with one engine shredded, landing at Manchester for an “emergency” refuel. All in accordance with the AOC procedures and 100% legit, but would you do that, knowing that there is no way to be sure of the extent of the damage? In another incident an engine failure in a Concorde caused a massive fuel leak and they only just made it to a runway.
At Heathrow, BA use the MLS (microwave landing system – that wonderful piece from the JAA IR theory 
). AFAIK nobody else can use it and it is not installed anywhere else – it has been a commercial failure – but I am told BA planes are equipped to fly it. Maybe they have a lower DH?
Also the problem with fog is that is it persistent and nobody knows how bad it will be, when, and when it will clear. In most fog conditions I have found that the TAF is optimistic regarding when the stuff will clear, so departing when the destination is in fog which is forecast to clear is generally dodgy, and having clean alternates is no use if they are dumps which will cause loads of problems if you land there.
the mass of airtraffic a big airport handles today is not to be managed under fog conditions, because ATC has to apply much more spacing between arriving
aircraft, arriving and departing aircraft, taxiing aircraft (CAT II and III protection zones on the ground).
So while in flight you will experience holdings – short hauls won’t get start up clearances. The only way to solve the delay problem for a big airline –
you mostly cannot extend the departures into the airport curfew hours – is to cancel flights.
The big hubs try to reduce short haul traffic in favour of long distance flights. Landing minima is not a problem any more for airliners –
before I retired CAT III landings required 75m RVR in the touchdown zone.
…if your aircraft is capable. We are Cat IIIa which is 200m RVR in the TDZ.
At work I fly the 737. If I were flying on my own time (AA5), I’m not rich enough!!!
FWIW (G- reg but I imagine the stricter minima apply to N- reg stuff?) Our company minima includes a limit of 400m for takeoff. This could be further reduced to 125m if certain conditions are met (Multiple RVR and 2 takeoff alternates within 1 hour OEI cruise I believe), the problem for us is that there is a further requirement to hold LVO approval from the authority, which we can’t justify the effort of obtaining.
To add to the remark of Nobbi.
Indeed the big guys effectiveliy can autoland in 0-0 if the runwayis properly equipped. The only reason for the 75m is that otherwise you may not see the exit :-)))!
It is not take off minima. I was in EGLC yesterday and they had between 175m and 300 m vis.
With 250 as T/O minimum it is no problem, but they ran out of planes.
The landing minimum for a BAe 146 is 1500m in LCY, so after all planes gone, no one could leave anymore.
No planes in equals no planes out.
… the problem for us is that there is a further requirement to hold LVO approval from the authority, which we can’t justify the effort of obtaining.
That’s a bit similar to CAT II approval for small and midsize bizjets. There are so few occasions when you could land under CAT II but not under CAT I that the paperwork and additional (and recurrent) training for the crews makes no economical sense. It is cheaper to divert once or twice per year than to get CAT II certified.
In my current company (been flying here for over five years now) we have LVTO approval for 125m visibility. We train that every time we go to the sim. Duriung my time here, I have done exactly two LVTO departures with visibility below the 400m that are sufficient for anybody. Not really worth the effort.
